Validation and Comprehension of Text Information: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Abstract

In psychological research, the comprehension of linguistic information and the knowledge-based assessment of its validity are often regarded as two separate stages of information processing. Recent findings in psycholinguistics and text comprehension research call this two-stage model into question. In particular, validation can affect comprehension outcomes, and the comprehension process involves a routine and early validation of the communicated information. These findings suggest that the comprehension and validation of information are more closely interwoven than traditionally assumed. Relationships of validation with integration and prediction and the broader implications of the concept for text comprehension research are discussed.

Expectation-based Comprehension: Modeling the Interaction of World Knowledge and Linguistic Experience

“…These processes are assumed to operate in a parallel but asynchronous manner; validation starts only after the process of integration has begun (see also O'Brien & Cook, 2016). Based on a range of empirical findings, Richter (2015) argues that validation is perhaps even more closely interwoven with integration, 3 These surprisal values are calculated for the depicted word-by-word transitions, and they may differ slightly from the averaged surprisal values shown in Figure 10.…”

“…On the empirical front, a wide range of findings has shown that the processing difficulty of individual words is affected by the larger discourse context and general knowledge about the world, above and beyond linguistic experience alone (see, e.g., Albrecht & O'Brien, 1993;Altmann & Kamide, 1999;Camblin, Gordon, & Swaab, 2007;Cook & Myers, 2004;Garrod & Terras, 2000;Hess, Foss, & Carroll, 1995;Knoeferle, Crocker, Scheepers, & Pickering, 2005;Knoeferle, Habets, Crocker, & Münte, 2008;Kuperberg, Paczynski, & Ditman, 2011;Morris, 1994;Myers & O'Brien, 1998;O'Brien & Albrecht, 1992;Otten & van Berkum, 2008;van Berkum, Brown, Zwitserlood, Kooijman, & Hagoort, 2005; van Berkum, Hagoort, & Brown, 1999;van Berkum, Zwitserlood, Hagoort, & Brown, 2003). As such, recent theories of text comprehension have emphasized the importance of world knowledge on incremental comprehension by arguing that the validation of message consistency is a central part of the comprehension process (Cook & O'Brien, 2014;Isberner & Richter, 2014;O'Brien & Cook, 2016;Richter, 2015;Singer, 2006Singer, , 2013Singer & Doering, 2014).…”

Comprehension of Multiple Documents With Conflicting Information: A Two-Step Model of Validation

“…Readers use their knowledge and beliefs not only for interpreting and encoding text information but also for monitoring its validity. This process, which has been called epistemic monitoring (Isberner & Richter, 2014a) or validation (Richter, 2015;Singer, 2013), seems to be a routine part of comprehension activities. The modifier "epistemic" in epistemic monitoring clarifies that this kind of monitoring refers to the epistemic status of information (in contrast to the kind of comprehension monitoring that has been the focus of metacomprehension research; Baker, 1979).…”

“…In this article, we suggest that readers' prior beliefs affect multiple documents processing (partly) as a consequence of routine cognitive processes that continuously monitor incoming information for its consistency with currently active knowledge and beliefs, as well as currently active information from previously read text(s). In the text comprehension literature, these processes have been termed validation (Richter, 2015;Singer, 2013) or epistemic monitoring (Isberner & Richter, 2014a). The basic idea, which is elaborated in the next section, is that such validation processes are a regular component of comprehending texts.…”

“…These results indicate that classical cognitive and metacognitive strategies (which are the focus of the PQ4R training) are not sufficient to assist readers in the successful comprehension of controversial texts. Instead, multiple text comprehension requires readers to pay attention to routine cognitive processes involved in the immediate validation of information and the biasing effects of these processes (such as text-belief consistency effects) and to actively use their prior knowledge to strategically validate the plausibility of information (Richter, 2015;Richter & Schmid, 2010). Instructing readers to take a neutral perspective prior to reading and to activate prior knowledge to enrich textual information does not seem to be sufficient to overcome the belief bias that occurs in multiple text comprehension.…”